After picking up Infinity at the end of last year I’ve got burgeoning Yu Jing and Nomad forces & plenty of opponents at the club who have been likewise seduced by the minis and the cinematic feel of the rules. I’m still dining off the tale of one Shaolin getting lucky with a Chain Rifle and humbling a mighty TAG with three AROs ;-) Fantastic game, lovely minis & they keep getting better.

We’ve been playing Operation Overlord a lot & its a really fun game, playing with 1/72 plastic soldiers and tanks makes you feel like a big kid too! :-D

Got some Amera vac-form scenery for the club after reading about it in January’s Wargames Illustrated, good, cheap and nigh on indestructible when filled with spray insulation foam, its let us populate a good few tables with effective scenery at a very good cost. Also picked up some Hovels resin scenery at Partizan which we were all very impressed with, they have picked up a few orders from us since :-)

Tried out Anima Tactics and picked up a few of their sculpts and I really think the game is a gem! The models are pretty darn good too if you like the western anime look :-)

40k Apocalypse: What can you say? We already had a vibrant 40k mini-community at the club, Apocalypse was like throwing a boulder into a small pond - the waves are still going! Trying to tell Shaun he can’t use “Mr Snuffles” (his Hierophant Bio-Titan) in a 1250 point game is like telling a labrador that he can’t have his bone back - you just can’t do it! Every game of Apocalypse that we have played has been riotously good fun :-D

The latest pick-up is All Things Zombie, a great game and a great excuse to finally go get some of Hasslefree’s wonderful miniatures after seeing some that one of the guys at the club had picked up at a Partizan show at Newark :-) Harby has to be one of my favourite miniatures I bought this year! The uncluttered simplicity of the sculpts makes them fantastic to paint.

First half of next Year?

I’ll be trying to get to Salute for a start so I can see more of the stuff I didn’t buy this year up close and personal!

I’d like to acquire some of Heresy and Black Scorpion’s minis, maybe at Salute if the missus will let me have enough spending money :-) Also more excellent Hasslefree minis I think!

Maybe pick up & play some Legends of the Old West or some Legends of the High Seas

Tannhauser

Classic Battletech

Further off?

I’d like to try Hell Dorado if they get it translated - If not I have plans for a few of their demon minis in my All Things Zombie games, especially the gluttony demons ;-D

I’m still watching Rackham to see what they do… I like AT-43 but have only played the intro box as finances have been too stretched to afford their steep (vertical) prices, with the advent of FFG prices seem to be dropping which can only be a good thing. I’m cautiously optimistic about mini quality after seeing the latest Confrontation pics but I have to question whether I really need another large scale fantasy battle game when I have a vast army of WFB Orcs regularly hitting the table. The jury is out but I await the final verdict with baited breath…

War Machine/Hordes - I’d really like to try it as it seems a good system from my reading of the Hordes Prime rulebook. The opportunity has just never seemed to arise… Maybe I’ll catch a demo at Salute…

Pulp City? ;-)

Finally… My Number 1 favourite hobby accessory of the year?

TGN!

You guys have shone a light into so many corners of the gaming world that I’d never otherwise have seen! Keep up the fantastic work :-D

Rich

I started the year as a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan with an occasional interest in Warmachine, and ended up as a rabid Warmachine/Hordes junkie with an eclectic interest in Alternative Victoriana thanks to the quaintly odd Pax Limpopo range of figures from Eureka - even ended up as a playtester for their upcoming Pax game.

Suffering burnout halfway through the year from a particularly tedious terrain project caused me to put aside my LOTR fetish for fresher pastures and brought me into contact with some truly wonderful figures (mostly through the services of this website - my second favourite site after my own). This site has opened my eyes to all manner of shiny miniature goodness - Darkson Designs, Freebooter, Wyrd Minis, Pulp City, Pardulon, Hasslefree, Olleys Armies, and a host of others have some brilliant products just begging for my PayPal account, and the new games that are in the offing - Tannhauser, AT-43, AE-WWII, and all things Zombie - are promising a rich gaming future into 2008 and beyond.

Its not the entire ruleset but an introductroy set so it has fewer options that the core CBT rules.

I’m attempting to get a review of it done.

Infinity
First off, the minis are top notch. They are well proportioned (aside from the giant guns) and well detailed. It’s the kind of game that benefits from some house rules in the same way Necromunda or Mordheim did. It’s a game in that vein and incorporating guided weapons, parabolic fire, stealth and electronic countermeasures, its a very tacticly rich game.

Helldorado
With some help from a few fellow hobbyists, english rules are available. Again, the minis are gorgeous. I’m particularly fond of the Westerners and the Arab/Persian faction. The game plays surprisingly quickly and smoothly but with enough interesting special actions to give it color. If you’re just a collector or painter you can’t go wrong with these minis, some of which are far mroe gruesome and nightmarish that we might be accustomed to in the hobby. With a little bit of effort translating your cards, you have a great game, too.

Warmachine/Hordes
Though I’m a little burnt out on the leagues, I continuously find myself coming back to my work table to assemble and paint my Privateer Press stuff. This is the game I’m most likely able to get a pick-up game with. The models continue to be top notch (though I think Infinity and Helldorado are a cut above) and the game continues to be brutal. It’s a game of big wins and big losses. Evolution was a beautiful expansion and I was well pleased with the offerings for my faction. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny that Privateer Press puts together a lovely book.

Battletech
The nostalgia is overwhelming. I saw this at Gencon and got a game in that day. Rules, maps, and 20 figs for fourty dollars, it’s also a great bargain. While the miniatures won’t win any awards on their own merit, they have that 1980’s japanese comic thing going for them. Few other games capture the feeling of enormous payloads of rockets tearing legs off 100 ton machines of war.

Wyrd
A lot of my minis money has been going to Wyrd miniatures of late. That they don’t have a game to play with their minis is their only fault. And they’re working on fixing that! The thing I like about the Wyrd line is that it’s not your standard fantasy fare. There are steam-powered spiders, zombie prostitutes, and a family of weird(wyrd) west gunslingers. Morgue Master McMourning is my current favorite in the line.

Werner Klocke
Klocke continues to impress, enough said.

Don’t forget that Toys R Us has also been running sales on the sets as well.

I also got Marvel heroscape on sale and am planning ontrying a friend’s copy of Tannhauser. I’d consider these more board gamish though.
Man I almost totally forgot about Heroscape! I’m a very big fan and went really big with this game. I currently own 3 master sets, 2 master sets 2, 2 castle sets, 2 forest sets, 2 laval set and 1 ice set. I’m trying to complete my collection with expansions. It’s a great game and perfect way to introduce young ones into the world of miniatures game. It’s simple enough that I got my wife to play it with me, yet complex enough to have strategic army building and combos.

games/supplement
Hell Dorado as a first. The game pretty much combines everything I like from other systems and drops what I dislike from them. On top of that the universe is attractive and the minis amazing.
Hordes-Evolution is a close second. The storyline gets more and more captivating, PP is as always on top of their game when it comes to designing rules, and their miniatures get better and better as they mature.

fantasy minis
This year was literally overwhelming in this category. I’ll keep it to my very favorite ones.
Most of the stuff from Hell Dorado is simple way above everything else in my opinion, but I think Bran Carnoth, the greater Damned of Anger, and Chams Al Majid are the most striking ones to me.
Rackham’s swan song will definitely be the Mid Nor demon tower to me. It pretty much combines everything I used to love about this manufacturer.
Warmachine/Hordes had quite a few interesting models this year again, I think I’ll settle on the Warpwolf extreme (a bold and very under appreciated model imo) and Borka Kegslayer for Hordes, and Captain Rengrave for Warmachine.
Last but not least, the 54mm demon from JMD miniatures.

SF miniatures
The whole Infinity range acts as a continuous and strong incentive to get into the game. The Ariadna tank hunter and the Nomads Daktari are probably my favorite ones here.

Pulp minis
Harby from Hasslefree. Two of my favorite comic books in one mini, what can I say?
I’m assuming it belongs to that category, the bath girl from Crocodile games is probably on my overall top5 for this year. I put the link as there are few pictures of the model around, but you might consider it as NSFW.